Tag: flowers

This is not a food blog, but food’s part of my way of coping with the unfamiliar so you get to see some of what I cook. It also explains why the one “homesick” thing that brought me to tears was the absence of rice bran straws from American stores. I’m committed to my cereal recipe! Cereal is my comfort food. Anyway I’ve made minestrone, smoked ham & chickpeas (pictured) and pumpkin soup for the freezer. Cauliflower curry is next. I’ve bought two coats – one feels like I’m a walking around in a down sleeping bag! I’ve procured lined gloves and bought two pairs of boots, one for wet and one for when the snow’s more than 2″ deep Mam. Near the coat and boot shops I was distracted by Dr Seuss and the Lego store. I’ve been dehydrated because I’m not drinking enough.

Apart from distracted shopping for boots and coats this week I’ve been about getting into (and resisting) routines, maybe me and the weather too. One day was a steamy 27, the next maxed out at 9C and I thought I was living in a fridge. Apparently 10C max (<50F) is the new routine for weather until it gets actually cold. Even with boots and coats I know the weather’s changed, but the locals don’t think this is cold yet. Today the modem man (don’t ask, but yes, again) said this is his perfect temperature, loves it. This is a man in a tshirt and shorts… I’m getting into a gym routine. Have done a full week of settled uni classes and felt prepared. I’ve paid bills, cleaned my apartment, found where to get my trousers taken up so they don’t drape in the puddles. Eaten a ruben with sour kraut that stung my lips in a cafe that reminded me of Scheherazade, felt lonely a bit, you know, life.

I’ve been working on my study-life balance, although there’s been some procrasti-life balance for sure. Choir rehearsals started this week and I nearly cried I had so much fun, couldn’t stop smiling. I got turned inside out trying to find the rehearsal space and saw this room – have you noticed a theme in many of my Chicago photographs yet? No not ivy, although maybe that too. Montreal was street art, Chicago is…. Anyway we started learning a Bruckner motet and a South African hymn in Xhosa and I was just in seventh heaven. Our first concert is with Sweet Honey in the Rock. You politically radical, post-colonial feminist types, get listening! And the rest of you, well, if you don’t know them have a listen, ethical, gospel and good fun singing – yay. Oh and an Alto Lady who lives near me has offered to drive me home after rehearsal so I won’t have to walk in dark and snow. Nice.

I’ve almost come off the back of the treadmill because of course the speed is in mph and one doesn’t walk at 5.5-6 mph. I then climbed the 11 floors to my apartment after gym because the power was out. That was the day after I bought a flashlight despite the man in the hardware store telling me that the power never goes off in Chicago. We had quite a chat because I went in to buy a torch, I asked for a “big torch”. The hardware gentleman looked at me quizzically and took me to the back of the store, to a rack of 6′ stakes topped with kerosene wick contraption things! “No”, I said, “a torch”. “Yes”, he said holding his stake ready to enter The Temple of Doom (I’d say the Mines of Moria but Gandalf’s staff was smaller). “It’s like a cylinder, with a globe, batteries”, I said desperately trying to describe a torch in non-phallic terminology and sign language. “It’s like a flashlight!!” The light turned on, we laughed, I got a flashlight and batteries and the next day (at midday) the power went off. The power never goes off in Chicago, it must be me.

While walking everywhere I’m enjoying looking at leaves starting to change colour, jumping puddles, watching squirrels rush about collecting their foods. Still enjoying the architecture and smiling at summer’s last enduring flowers. Love the hydrangeas. I’ve walked past a group of Chinese ladies doing tai chi in the park a few times. Not sure why but they make me smile. Some sitting with the children in the playground, the rest moving slow and deliberate. There’s a lot to be said for slow and deliberate.

I have been so privileged this trip to stay with families, to be welcomed into people’s homes, invited to share food, to sit. One of the truly great privileges of this trip was being taken by a dear friend and her family to Melaka, and then invited into the home of artist Tham Siew Inn. Such an honour to quietly spend time inhaling the atmosphere of the artist’s residence, imbibing the green of their gardens. Drinking tea. Sitting us women, peeling pomelo. Talking with family members, two sons creative artists themselves and the oh so real, material, tangible woman-wife-foundation, herself a teacher and creative floral artist. There were times sitting with the art, wandering the rooms, up and down the stairs, when I caught myself almost wondering what we were doing next, but not following the thought as time had slowed, the lime infused walls cooled the heat of stress and haste, and I wanted to just be, to be breathing, to just be. The colour breathed calm into the empty places in my soul. And of course sharing together much much wonderful local food breathed companionship into the empty places in all our bellies.

When you look out from the first floor gallery through the open windows, the old green glass with its patina of the ripples of time, you see into Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, one of the oldest streets in UNESCO listed Melaka. That’s the street where you find the artist’s gallery, and it’s a street of contrasts. From the most hip art coffee house The Baboon House, to a museum with original shoes for Chinese women’s bound feet, to a UNESCO restored house showing original architecture and building styles. The atmosphere of creativity, grounded in history, twisting and tasting and reinventing identity and vision and place. Continue reading “Inhaling colour, tasting light”

Today is slow. I’m in a five star resort converted from a British cotton and silk merchant’s company estate. It’s lovely. There are peacocks outside my bedroom window. There are cool sweet scented breezes. There is a pool to which I will retire directly for the afternoon.

After last night and before this morning’s violent re-emergence of breakfast in under 15 mins – Karthick took me early to the Madurai markets. Apparently it’s Sunday and in good post-colonial style Sunday is still a holiday here so much of the markets were closed. But I still had fun wandering around the flower wholesalers taking photos scented with jasmine and rose. The rose wholesalers offered me chai and a smile.

Then we went to the vegetable market where my pictures smell of coriander, mint and curry leaves. Lots of smiles and waves and head wobbling. Being 80% closed was much more relaxed than a normal day I’m sure, but that suited me and my camera.

Aren’t these just such beautiful people? Makes me smile just remembering them welcoming me like it was perfectly normal for a crazy Australian woman to be wandering around at dawn taking their photographs like they were royalty.

It was then back to the hotel for breakfast hmmmm. You will have guessed above, it was a fatal mistake. No more to be said about dodgey omelette. I’ll live, just feel like a day by the pool. Sorry to today’s three programmed temples, but I’m sure there will be more in the next 12 days.

I now receive a daily call from Delhi office to make sure everything is in order madam. Ah well, good to be memorable! I’m not mentioning the omelette, they’ll only worry. Now for that nap then the pool.

There is no soundtrack to this post unless you choose one, but do pour yourself a glass of bubbles

This is a post that I forgot to share back in December when I was crazy busy getting ready to come to India. Cathy and I had a brilliant day with bubbles and an amazing lunch on the Mornington Peninsula, then we had a bit of a perambulate in some lovely garden areas.

Who would have thought that artichokes and garlic gone to seed could look so beautiful. Love flowers that “convention” says are passed their best – the best is yet to be.

And then we went to Flinders Beach for a walk in the drizzle and found a very large friend feeding in the sea grass. And some learner wind surfers who were caught without wind, and like ducklings had to be brought back to shore.

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About Wendy’s Out of Station

I write as a way of processing and reflecting on experience, and as a way of sharing that experience. When I travel I used to write email journals back to friends, family, anyone who’d read and risk immersing themselves in my reality for a while: writing for them was a way of writing for me. Borrowing from Graham Greene in a flip of Travels with my Aunt, I imagined writing letters to my nieces, as their travelling aunt. Crafting the sentences became a way of extruding the experience, giving it birth, drawing its meaning from my soul, nurturing it into something tangible with a life of its own.
The aim of my blog is to open the world to my thought-children, to let them out of the safety of my friends and family and let them experience the world. And in the process I get the honour of taking a larger group with me when I’m wandering around India and beyond, or just reflecting on parallel truths, thinking thoughts that take me to new places new beginnings.
Please journey with me